“There are days, or perhaps just moments, when I feel like giving up. I have had to resign myself to the incomprehensible idea that society has decided to blame many of its failings on teachers. But I know we don’t deserve the rap….

It’s not that test scores aren’t useful to me. I can look at my numbers dispassionately and say that I didn’t challenge my honors class enough last year, or that I could have spent more time teaching the concepts that are likely to be on the standardized test. But test scores alone tell so little of the story as to be practically useless in evaluating teacher performance. The best educators know that.”

Do you believe evaluation models can account for extreme working conditions and high-risk students like this LA Unified teacher describes? Or do you believe this is an example of an ‘outlier,’ and the evaluations are likely to be fair to most teachers?

This post originally appeared on EWA’s now-defunct online community, EdMedia Commons. Old content from EMC will appear in the Ed Beat archives.